1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to generation of a device capabilities file for a printing system and more specifically to the use of an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema to substantially automatically generate a device capabilities file for a printing system.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In many printing environments, including print shops (large and small) as well as production printing and even smaller workgroup environments, it is generally known to create Job Definition Format (JDF) information describing the processing required to print a particular print job. JDF information is encoded, in accordance with JDF standards, as an XML document. JDF is a widely adopted standard for providing information (printing parameters, layout parameters, finishing parameters, etc.) relating to processing of a print job. The JDF information is typically contained in an object/file referred to as a “job ticket” and is associated with the print data for the print job by entries in the job ticket. The JDF standards are published by CIP4 (a trade organization), are well known to those of ordinary skill in the art, and are readily available at www.cip4.org.
In most printing environments, a JDF job ticket is generated by interaction with a user by presenting the user with available features and setting for those available features. In some printing environments the available features and the possible settings for those features are often described in a device capabilities file used by the print job generator application's user interface. The print job generator application presents the user with information provided in the device capabilities file and receives user input selecting particular features and settings for those features. The print job generator then generates a JDF job ticket defining the parameters for printing the job.
Many manufacturers of printing system provide such a device capabilities file. The format for such device capabilities files can often be complex and is also standardized by CIP4 as an aspect of the JDF family of standards. However, many devices from other manufacturers are sold/provided without the manufacturer providing a device capabilities file—or at least not providing such capabilities in a standardized format used for the device capabilities files provided by many other manufacturers. These printing devices may include print engines and various pre-processing and post-processing devices—e.g., “finisher” devices such as folders, staplers, etc. A user/purchaser of such devices that relies on a print job generator to generate print jobs may therefore need to manually construct a device capabilities file to describe the available features and associated feature settings for these printing devices that are devoid of a manufacturer supplied device capabilities file. Such manual processing is complex and prone to human errors.
Thus it is an ongoing challenge to generate a device capabilities file while reducing or eliminating human errors in the process.